Books all kids should read at school (a list) | Hacker News Reader

Books all kids should read at school (a list)

romansnitko.posterous.com

19 pointssnitko31 comments

I'm not sure what's remarkable about this list. It presents one person's point of view. I sure hope that someone who wants to come up with a real reading list for children will be much less one-sided.

Also, the lack of fiction on this list makes it pretty terrible. What a boring reading list.

I agree. People should read what they like.

This list is pretty much just biology/psychology - something that personally isn't my idea of fun. Good luck trying to get kids to read those books :/ What kid really wants to read a book on nutrition? Probably the kid who doesn't need to read a book on nutrition that's who.

If you're going to come up with a list of books you personally believe kids should read, at least try and make it slightly varied. And maybe even fun/enjoyable. Or change the title to "List of biology/psychology books".

The first three books, for example, are essential for those who'd like to live a longer life. Personally, I find living to be quite a fun, comparing to being dead. I think people should be taught basic ideas about how to stay alive, which these books present.

BS. Sleeping 8 hours a night doesn't make you live longer.

Sleeping less than 2 hours a night for a long period of time may make you live less.

Same with diet. Eat a normal average diet, and you're set. Eat MacDonalds every day for breakfast, and maybe you'll die a bit earlier.

Don't forget also:

total happiness = time spent doing something * happiness level

eg, I would hate to maximize for 'time' at the expense of average happiness level.

The chances are we'll mostly die from accidents, cancer, etc anyway.

What you're saying is a simplification. Not eating from McDonalds is not enough. Cancer was linked to specific diets, so don't think you're safe just because you're no a fastfood fan. Also significant number of accidents on the roads happen because people are drowsy - a result of a huge sleep debt, which might not be as obvious (you may sleep 8 hours the night before and steel be drowsy at the wheel).

>> "Also significant number of accidents on the roads happen because people are drowsy"

Show some evidence. I don't buy it.

Check out this for example: http://www.tfhrc.gov/humanfac/sleep/sleepweb.htm People were sleep deprived, then tested on a road simulator.

Also, if you're looking for some data, the problem is that many fatal accidents' causes are reported as unknown. Given the results of the simulation, a majority of those accidents may be related to sleep deprivation.

SLEEP DEPRIVED != not sleeping 8 hours a night.

Sleep deprivation is dangerous. But it's also obvious. You don't need to read a book to know that.

Well , listen, you're wrong - that's why you should read the book. Say you sleep 7 hours a night instead of 8. Brain keeps track of the sleep you take. If you miss some, it adds it to your sleep debt. Then after a week you got full 8 hours extra sleep debt and even if you sleep 8 hours the night before you drive, you'll feel drowsy very soon after you wake up.

Researches have been conducted which proved that the condition after a lack of sleep 1 hour each night during a week would be equal to the condition when you haven't slept through the night.

Also see this document: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/PEOPLE/INJURY/drowsy_driving1/drows...

If we want children to understand nutrition, exercise, sleep, social skills, or any other subject, then we should figure out how best to teach those subjects. It might be books or it might be normal classes. I strongly suspect there are many children, especially those with autodidactic tendencies, who could learn most subjects better and faster from books than from lectures. But that probably isn't all children.

I propose offering students a choice - would you like a class on nutrition, or would you like to read the/a book on nutrition, and have an expert available for questions (preferably online)? Students who choose unstructured learning but then fail to achieve can be placed into classes.

This way, industrious or gifted students won't be held back by the pace of other students, or by the speed at which the teacher speaks. And this might encourage autodidacticism, which I think is incredibly valuable and efficient.

The only problem I have with this post is the "at school" part. Schools are not really for life-education like this (sadly). It's not feasible in a place where cultures clash so much in the class room like the US, you risk offending etc., and as stupid as it sounds it's a real issue. Anyone familiar with city public schools can agree...

True, maybe one of the books should be 'how to be offended and get over it'. Since a lot of people (at least vocal people anyway) seem to think they have a right not to be offended as they travel through life.

Agreed. I homeschool my children so that they can read a lot more than children are expected to read in school. Personally, I'm glad my children also read better books than the books suggested in the submitted blog post.

Could you tell a bit more about homeschooling? Experience, advices? What's the hardest thing about it, for example?

You might be interested in the "unschooling" ideas of David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman):

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/case-for-unschool...

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/unschooling-advan...

http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/12/home-unschooling-...

The hardest thing about homeschooling for some families here in the United States is getting out of the two-income trap enough to have time to do it. My wife and I could have made more money for ourselves, thinking in the short term, by sending our children to the schools our taxes already pay for and working full-time (or overtime) when our children were younger. But I'm satisfied with the educational results of the trade-off we made.

Time management is more of an issue for some people than others. It is generally more of an issue for a homeschooling family as the number of children increases. Our oldest is about to go off to college, and thus our household size will begin going down for the first time in several years.

Here's a link with more information:

http://learninfreedom.org/

For us, the bottom line is that we are glad to have homeschooled, and are keeping it up for our younger children.

Nice post, but I feel like a lot of topics covered in this list are far from being well understood. Especially 'proper' nutrition.

True. We're barely our of the jungle and science knows so little yet. But that doesn't mean we should avoid teaching these subjects. There are a lot of useful and important things that were proven to work that it now seems a crime to ignore them.

I agree, if you read a book about nutrition and realize that it just covers a current understand of nutrition, then I think that is fine.

The danger is that people read these books and don't realize or don't care about the prior statement. People start feeding their kids based on this advice, policy makers start making policy, and then the next thing you know we find out we were all wrong. Kind of like the current food pyramid we find ourselves with now. Some day it will be updated, and then 20 years later it will be updated again.

You're exactly right, this danger exists. And if you read the book on nutrition I suggested, you will see how careful the author is about making conclusions. He actually warns about pretty much the same thing you've just said. Same thing you will see in most of the books I recommended. After reading all those books I have a great sense of respect for all those people seeing how accurate and careful they are in what they say and how this may affect other people.

I don't get it. If you read a book on nutrition and don't take action based on that advice, what was the point of reading it? Sure you should adapt your strategy as new evidence becomes available, but otherwise you are the same as you were before.

> I believe teaching literature should be partly replaced by the essential subjects that contribute to the quality of life. I'm not saying fiction is useless but there are certainly things out there that are much more important.

Fiction/literature can contribute quite significantly to 'quality of life.' For instance in my n=1 study, it has shown to be one of the most significant factors. If there is one thing about my future of which I am certain, it is that I will always enjoy (and learn from) good fiction.

Basically, people are different; we have different interests. I'm wary of any effort to generalize such a common curriculum.

I'm not saying ban fiction. All I'm saying - you may enjoy good fiction for a lot longer time if you eat right, exercise and sleep well.

Lists like these always makes me think about the effects of forced reading. The books I've enjoyed most I've chosen to read. Being forced to read some books, even great books, have ruined them for me.

Just getting people to read in general is an accomplishment. I saw some statistics once that are pretty much summed up by this page: http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html

I generally agree that voluntary reading is better for the reader than assigned reading. And yet I must give my tenth grade English teacher in Wisconsin credit for assigning me to read The Chosen by Chaim Potok,

http://www.amazon.com/Chosen-Chaim-Potok/dp/0449213447

a wonderful book that acquainted me with the author, whose subsequent books are also well worth reading.

It's a good list; but lets not ignore the pure sciences either! Text books are usually pretty boring so "A Briefer History of Time" should be on there. "Nemesis" maybe because it's a good story as well.

Great post. I've loved following 100redesigns too..

Thanks, I appreciate that. Have not updated 100redesigns for a while. New project eats all of the time.

Self-promotion of mediocre blog posts - it's called spam, isn't it?

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